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Wednesday, August 25, 2010

GIVEAWAY: BLINGuals Illustrated Flash Cards

I quickly discovered last year that my daughter was a hands-on learner. Sitting at a table doing worksheets was tolerable, but certainly did not elicit much enthusiasm on her part. But give esta niña some tangible items to manipulate and ta-da! Like magic, the lesson comes alive and captures her attention and imagination.

This year we have started off with a lot more manipulatives in our lesson plans and some of them are new to us. A couple days ago, I opened up a new set of bilingual flash cards from BLINGuals. The illustrated cards are English on one side and Spanish on the other. I have found these to be extremely versatile in that they are beneficial for second-language learning, but they are also great for teaching categorization, color learning, spelling practice and reading.

In the picture above, my daughter was grouping the cards into various categories. And she was able to do so in more than one way. They could be grouped by color, location, function, and other relative categories. This was awesome for me, as one of the topics in both her math and science lessons right now is comparison and categorization. Doing this activity with the cards was a great way to reinforce these concepts.

I also used these during her Spanish lessons to see which words she knew and which ones needed work. I can see that they will be a definite tool for learning to read in Spanish, as well.

I'm also able to use these with my preschooler for color recognition. (The cards can easily be sorted into all your traditional colors: red, pink, yellow, orange, green, blue, purple, brown, gray, and black.) And I can see that they will be great to help with learning letter sounds.

You can tell a lot of thought has gone into the design of this product. There are quite a few sets of bilingual flash cards out there (I know because we have a few of them), but I think that one of the reasons that my kids and I are enjoying these so much is because of the illustrations. They are not independent of each other, but rather are tied together in a story book like fashion with a young boy and girl as the main characters. I found my daughter arranging the cards in a certain order to "tell a story." And the English side is surrounded by a blue border, whereas the Spanish side is yellow, which is helpful if you or your kids accidentally drop them all over the floor. They are very easy to sort without having to look at each word.

There are a couple of cards that use Spanish words that I don't (I say "pelota" not "bola" and I use "camión" instead of "carro") but with such a diverse language, I don't find it to be bothersome. I just acknowledged it and then used the word that I preferred.

BLINGuals also offers flash cards in other language combinations. Acutally, they have 15 available languages that you can choose from and you can get your cards in any combination (i.e., French/Spanish?)

THE GIVEAWAY:

BLINGuals has agreed to send one of these great flash card decks to a MommyMaestra reader.

So let's keep it simple. Just leave a comment letting me know how you would use this deck with your kids.

The deadline to enter is August 31st at 11:59 pm EST. The winner will be chosen using Random.org and will be notified via email. (Please be sure to provide a valid email address with your entry.) The winner must have a valid United States mailing address.

¡Buenas suerte!

Disclosure: A sample of this product was provided by BLINGuals, but the opinions expressed above are completamente my own.

21 comments:

These cards would be perfect for my son to have at his grandmothers house! She takes care of him during the day & often times has a hard time understanding him. We are raising him bilingual (English/Spanish) & she only speaks English. SO these would help her learn a few words while allowing my son to practice Spanish while away from the house.

These Cards would be perfect for my family because my dad understands English but he has a hard time when it comes to reading. I have ask my dad and my husband to try to speak to him in Spanish. my husband forgets and sometimes i forget but i try to remind my self that i have to speak to him in Spanish. I think that this card game would not only help my son but it would help all off us to... Thank you!!

I would love to use these now with my 4 year old son, and later when my 3 month old daughter could benefit from them. My husband and I both speak Spanish (it's his first language), but it's hard to carve out time sometimes for Spanish instruction since my son has such a strong base in English from having my mom take care of him.

I teach ESOL as well, so these could also come in handy at school :) Thanks for sharing about them.

My son is also big on manipulatives. Workbooks bore him. He's got other "flashcards" we play games with. If I win these, I'd look for Spanish / French since he's "French curious" lately and we would make up matching games, sorting games, story games, & reading. Crossing my fingers to win!

My daughter is taking Spanish for the first time. I would use these with her to help her with her vocabulary. She has also taken some French, so I would love to get her a combination of cards. Thanks!mmk101(at)att(dot)net

we are a bilingual home, english and spanish. my son already loves flashcards, i usually translate for him, so i would use the spanish ones to help him with reading spanish too as the cards we have usually don't ahve the written spanish on them

I would love these cards for my kids. She is in a Spanish Dual Language program at school and we could really use these as a study tool during our "homeschooling session" after her public school session. Love your blog ... has been very useful. Sherri (ssgarcia@q.com)